Manhattan Offender

Unless you are an elf, please don't wear pointed-toe shoes and other rants.

The shoes are just the wing-tip of the iceberg.  Life is too busy right now!  There are unfinished drafts that just can't seem to get written!  There are pitches sitting incomplete in the outbox!  But a jazzy queen riding on my subway car has tipped me over the edge!

What have I been up to?

• Marching in Queens Pride with Western Queens for Marriage Equality and the Bridesmaids for Marriage Equality!
• Making lunch with farfalle, tuna, olive oil, black beans, and petite Brussels sprouts!
• Calling my State Senator and Governor Patterson's office, trying to ensure that there is a vote on the marriage bill!
• Working around 60 hours per week!
• [Redacted] with [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], AND [redacted]!
• Going to TUG and TWEET at The Hose!
• Marching in Brooklyn Pride with Marriage Equality New York and the blushing, beautiful, boozy Bridesmaids for Marriage Equality!
• BBQ at Met!
• Crashing house-parties in Brooklyn and "encouraging" shots of Jägermeister!
• Pitching my first ever thing to [Redacted]!  About Cairo!
• Being interviewed for [Redacted]!
• Going to Butt Magazine's foolish party at Knitting Factory!
• Going to the (meh) Big Banana Party at Gorilla Club (which is secretly also Knitting Factory)!
• Making my first purchase on Gilt Group!  John Varvatos for Converse!
• And there is writing!  The Pride continues over at The Awl!  And there are lesbians!  

It's funny, how staring at a pair of shoes can bring you back to a point of furor that makes you want to reach out to the person wearing them and scream at them, "You are not an elf and therefore should not wear pointy shoes!" but instead you start to write again because those horrible horrible shoes screamed at you first:  "You're alive!"

August? Fuck you!

• This weekend will be the fifth of six for my quarter-share.  The last week is sometime in September.
• I have four (of twenty) vacation days remaining all of which are in reserve for the holidays.
• I have not had a "summer romance".
• I am just now "tan".  Quotations added as a translucent person such as myself doesn't really tan per se, but there is a "tan line" where #FFFFFF meets the #FFFFC0.  (HTML joke!  Look at me, I'm internutty!)
• Those Fire Island Listening Projects?  Sure, I have lots of notes, but haven't had time to write them.
• I've not read one book that has been my "Book of the Summer".
• There is one month left to make this "the best summer ever". 

Pink Patch can suck it

Over eighteen spam emails have landed in my box today for a weight loss product called "pink patch".

Four of them arrived while I was working out at lunch.

Any more from this company, and I think I have the right to sue these people for harassment.

And, yes.  I do indeed have the emotional security of a teenage girl.

I have not had a cigarette in twenty-four hours

Current status:
- Left calf tingles.
- The arch of my right foot aches.
- Balls feel as if they are being held in a non-flirtacious manner.
- My taint is asleep.
- My stomach feels "heavy", as if there were a weight on it.
- Deep breaths find my chest feeling loosey-goosey.
- There is a phlegmish feeling in the back of my mouth.
-  It tastes like bad cock in my mouth.
- Smiling hurts, like lifting a weight.
- My upper eyelids are heavy.
- There is a ringing in my left ear.

Vicodin will be visited upon my return home tonight.

1001 posts?

The previous post was my 1000th.  It seems that I may have wasted it.  Or not.

Barberous/barberic

My barber shop is on Park Avenue South in the twenties.  My haircut (a number two attachment to the clippers all around with natural back and blended sideburns) is easily achieved, but still, my standards are high.  There is an older barber at my barbershop that I avoid like the plague as he lacks the detail orientation required.  Little flyaways must be noticed and dealt with.

On my last visit, there was a new younger barber.  As my regular guy was busy, I climbed into the new guys chair.  His level of detail is excellent.  What could be a five minute haircut is approaching twenty.  Little details about him become apparent.  The tufty soft black hair on his arms.  The soft brown of his eyes.  His smooth tan skin.  Suddenly my imagination has him naked and noticing every time he presses against me.

In a slight (very, mind you) rapture, he's finished with the hair and gained my trust from his work.  He had asked to trim the beard  earlier, but I had refused as I like to do my own (or let this one certain friend do it when we're both naked).  But again he asks and this time, caught up in my little fantasy-world, I allow it and am so deep in my own "special place" that little attention is paid.

He finishes, and I open my eyes.  To find a beard that has been trimmed up to the jawline.  Like that of a Puerto Rican bike messenger.  Like that of guys that have weak jawlines and need their beards to create a stronger appearance.  All my appointments that week flash into my head:  that sort-of date with the super-hottie, Daniel Nardicio's movie premiere, my regular meetings with this one new guy.  The damage is done though and nothing can be done to fix it save removing it all, something unimaginable.

My beard grows quickly and, in fact, The Line is no longer visible.  But word to the wise:  trust no one with a cutting implement aimed at your throat.

Yikes.

Poor neglected website.  Here's a scattershot post.

This week's And the Brand Played On had me zeroing in on "Fag Hags" of the Blue Whale which was a complete and total blast.  I now have a technique to listening in on people if I don't have a notepad handy.  By repeating verbatim what is just heard into the voice recorder of my cell phone all is pretty effectively captured.

Double-dipping, Past, Over is all about the Pride.  It's easy to hate on Pride.  It's hokey, odd, and outfield.  Which is why I will still go to the parade and give my support.  Only eight years ago my sexuality was still disclosed from my parents.  Granted they had already figured it out years before, but it was great blossoming for me.  Pretty much a self-actualized gay at this point, I see it as a responsibility to lend my support to both my predecessors and to communities that are still emerging. 

Stepping off the soapbox to dish some Fire Island dirt:

• Pavilion on Fire Island still is incomplete.  Apparently they filed permits as a renovation and not as a reconstruction and therefore are now being denied a certificate of occupancy.  The government official needed to fix the problem will not even come to the area until sometime in late June.
• The Meatrack path between Cherry Grove and the Pines was perfectly painted in a vibrant orange paint.  The painters hit every toe-stubbing stump and thorny vine.  Unfortunately though, the rains of last week pretty much washed the paint away, leaving only a slight orange tint on the path and problem area.
• Every member of my house to date has seen me naked.  Oops.

Other randomness:

• For the first time in my life, I've hired a housekeeper.  While out on the island last weekend, she came in and caught up all of the cleaning that was neglected during the three months of illness.  Perhaps the best present ever given to myself.
• Sybil the cat is doing great, but I'm wondering if I'm a good father.  Abandoned two weekends in a row (one of the neighbor's kids feeds and plays with her - a bargain at $20!) she is now much more affectionate and runs to the door when I come home.  Also, my own eating disorder might be passed along to her.  After having two cats die two years ago, one from diabetes, keeping her slim and healthy is important to me.  Every day she plays fetch for a good half hour, running through rooms to get the thrown toy.  At the end of these sessions, she vigorously pants, something I've not seen a cat do before.  Similarly, her quantity of food hasn't increased in her two months with me, but she has grown substantially.  Maybe I'll buy her a little scale that measures body fat and rewards her with a treat for BMI of 13 per cent or below.  Video soon.

Two.

Daily Motion can lick my Box

If you tuned in yesterday, there was, for the majority of the day, a video in the previous post marked as "explicit" by the site Daily Motion.  After requesting this flag be removed by Daily Motion, the following was received in reply:

Hi,
Now everybody can watch your vidéo (for your information, the tag "gay"
has "autoexplicited" your vidéo) just take care when choosing your tags
next time...
Regards,
Mathieu

Well, Daily Motion can take their autoexplication of gay and upload it.  Being gay does not automatically mean explicit.  Even the trampiest of us have moments that are quite ambiguous, confused, implicit, indirect, obscure, unclear, vague and whatever other antonyms fo explicit you can conjure.

So now, it's Motion Box for me.  The upload times are faster and it actually has cool features I've not seen elsewhere.  The viewer is allowed not only to scroll along, but to actually remix as well.  (And as my video editing skills are negligible, that may be well advised.) 

You seem hot. Pic and ssn to trade?

So, the ManHunt account ends today.  It was one of those many "you really need to have an account there" accounts and an effective time-killer during the cold months.  The membership:

1. Allowed for the realization that of the people in my immediate neighborhood, I'm already friends with anyone with whom I would be interested in being friends.
2. Reconnected me with the best friend of the second person I ever dated.
3. Made me realize what a burden typing can be and at the same time how protective people are of their phone numbers.  Like it's going from me to some telemarketing televangelist database.
4. Demonstrated that those thought to not have ManHunt memberships actually do, and those expected to have them, well, they do too.

The clencher is what has been presented to friends already on the site, my "ManHunt Math".  If the population of metropolitan New York is 20 million and if 8 per cent of that population is gay then there are 1.6 million gays, half of which are men.  Of that 800,000, about 15% are within the acceptable age range, generally speaking, leaving a sample pool of 120,000 available men walking around.  Similarly, on an average night in the New York metropolitan area, there are approximately 3,000 men on ManHunt, of which perhaps 30% are of an acceptable age group.  This creates an acceptable dating pool of 900 that are being encountered on ManHunt of the total available.  So, by being on ManHunt, one limits oneself to less than 1% of the available and acceptable men out there.  The logical conclusion?  Get out of the house more.

All of the above paired with my general culling of sites from being over-networked, means that it is now time to say whore revoir.  The automatic re-billing turned off, the final day is set for Friday, February 16.  Then, on the penultimate day, comes the following e-mail which is affecting my decision:

From: ManhuntServiceman
Subject: Hook-Up Safety Tips
Date: Thu Feb 15, 2007 01:18 PM
Because we care about your personal safety…
Never give out personal information that could be used against you. Be cautions about giving your address, place of work and never give out any financial information or things like your passport number, bank account numbers or your social security number. 
For more information and other tips…please click on “Help Center” on the bottom left of your screen and then select “Safety Tips” on the bottom of the screen. Be safe and happy hunting!
The MANHUNT.net Team

Upon reading the message, the total reaction was, "What?!?"  Stupid guys are huh-ot!  Nobody told me there would be ignoramuses.  The whole cat-and-mouse, clever, verbally tricky guys are dollar-a-dozen in this town.  Give me a sports-watching, non-fashion, rock-listening guy anytime.  As long as I can dress him in vintage Helmut.  And he can be my muse.  And oh, financially independent and generous.

Fare thee well, ManHunt.  "Versaphile" out.